Team player
As Seal Team returns for a seventh and final season, star David Boreanaz reflects on the impact of the action drama, his breakout role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his multi-discipline approach to making television.
For more than two decades, actor David Boreanaz has been an almost constant presence on US television. His breakout role came as Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ran from 1997 to 2003, before he starred in a spin-off called Angel that overlapped with Buffy from 1999 to 2004.
Across both series, Boreanaz appeared in 168 episodes as a vampire cursed with a human soul, leading him to help Buffy in her duties as the Slayer, who is tasked with fighting the forces of evil.
He went on to star in Bones, Fox’s crime drama than ran for more than 200 episodes between 2005 and 2017. In the series, he played FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, who partners up with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) to solve federal cases involving the human remains of possible murder victims.
Then after 12 seasons on Bones, Boreanaz was immediately called up to SEAL Team, the action drama that began on CBS in 2017. He plays Jason Hayes, the respected and intense leader of Bravo team, in a series that follows the lives of the Navy SEALs’ most elite unit as they execute dangerous high-stakes operations to defend their country at a deeply personal cost.
In the seventh and final season, which debuts on August 12 on Paramount+, Hayes struggles to balance his warrior’s existence with the responsibilities of single fatherhood. Filmed in LA and on location in Colombia, the series is produced by CBS Studios and distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.
Other actors may prefer to move more frequently between series, but Boreanaz has demonstrated a keenness to develop the roles he plays, with his preference for the work he does entirely based on character.
“I don’t say, ‘I want to do this or I want to stay in this,’” he tells DQ, speaking at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival earlier this year, where he served as the event’s fiction competition jury president. “I think repetition is how you grease the gears, the engines. From an actor’s perspective, playing a character over many years, how do you make that exciting? That’s the work you put into it, right? That’s the hours that people don’t see. It’s the rewriting of dialogue, the chemistry you create on a show like Bones, it’s having a co-star who’s willing to coach with you week in, week out. I was fortunate to have that.
“I don’t look at it as, ‘This is where I want to stay.’ There are learning aspects to this. There’s growth, there’s directing, there’s producing, there’s understanding. And to get to other aspects of what’s next is exciting because I don’t dictate it. I let it happen, and it happens for reasons. It doesn’t happen because I’m saying I’m going to do that next. We’ll see how this evolves. But it’s exciting. I just want to continue to do that.”
Here, Boreanaz talks about bringing SEAL Team to an end, becoming a director and what he might be working on next.
Starring in SEAL Team was a gruelling experience, both physically and emotionally…
With the type of show this is – so practically shot, and the intensity of the role and the [psychological issues my character deals with in terms of his] departure from how we started his missions and his home life – you have to look at the show as this huge thing of adversities. And playing this role physically was demanding. I’ve had more MRIs in the past eight years of my life than I would like to talk about, and I don’t want any more.
The spiritual journey inside the character has to be inward and outward. That’s my process, and that’s where I found myself with the character and ending the series the way it should be ended. But plot doesn’t drive the story for me – characters drive the story. And I continue to do that with my choices in story and in my career.
SEAL Team might be ending, but the door is open for a feature film.
I still feel as though a film can be easily achievable over some time, given how we shoot this show and the locations, and being fortunate to go to certain places around the world and take this show and tell these stories. These guys can be picked up at any time. So without giving away any kind of end to the evolution of the series and where it is, it’s something that is open-ended and I wouldn’t say dead.
The series has never sought to be political…
Our show had guys that had to do a job regardless of what side they were on, so they don’t have an opinion. These guys, these special operators, are a unique group of people that do a specific thing. And their focus is to get the mission done. That’s it. Failure’s not an option. I don’t care where that comes from. That’s it. It’s your job, execute it. Don’t have something going in thinking I’m for this person or that person. It’s not a political show.
But the support Boreanaz receives from real veterans makes him emotional.
When an operator in the military says, ‘Thank you, you saved my life. I was going to kill myself last night, but I watched your show. I saw something that made me reach out for help,’ that is the best compliment I could ever receive doing a show like this. Our men and women in the military and veterans should be celebrated every day.
Whichever character he plays, the actor can learn something from them, but he’s not one for reunions.
I’ve just finished SEAL Team, so that series is so fresh to me right now and so empowering and impactful to me. It’s something I really identified with, and I’m still thawing out; I’m still desensitising. I’m still like, ‘Wow, what did we just do?’ And my body reminds me what I just did. I’m very close to that right now, but there are parts of me that are just like, ‘It’s done,’ then you just move on.
I don’t like to revisit a lot of things. I’ve never liked reunions – I find them very awkward. Someone asked me about looking back, and would you play this character again? Would you revisit this? I don’t have an answer for that. I can look at Bones and I can say, ‘This is such an open-ended case story. It’s fun. It’s a dramedy. I loved doing that show. I loved playing that character.’ And it was great to exercise that muscle of sardonic humour. That enabled me to find certain gears I could play with, and that’s an easy one to do if you wanted to do any kind of a redo, and that’s very popular right now.
My wheelhouse is pretty clear: charming lead, sardonic. The physicality, I enjoy to an extent right now, and I love the heroic stuff. I always have.
When he first joined Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Boreanaz didn’t imagine it would become a global hit.
I just wanted a pay cheque. I was young. I really wanted to work. The [character] breakdown for Angel was, ‘A prize fighter who was knocked down but always got back up.’ I was like, ‘Hey, I identify with that. He’s a boxer. I’m in.’ That’s it. You don’t really think too hard about it when you’re in it. And when you reflect on it, you go, ‘There’s so many hours, there’s so much stuff. I don’t even know how to process that.’ I really don’t. Maybe I’ll write a book one day when I’m 91, and be like, ‘OK, now it’s my turn.’ Why not?
He initially turned down the chance to star in SEAL Team, but fate conspired to throw him a second opportunity to join the show.
When I started SEAL Team, I sat down with [executive producer] Chris Chulack and it was purely about directing. It had nothing to do with joining a series whatsoever. Now, I knew about the series. I knew about the script. I wasn’t really enthralled with the script. I didn’t know what SEALs were. I didn’t know what they did. So I had dinner with him and I was offered the role. I was like, ‘I’m not going to go shoot this in New Orleans. I just finished Bones [which was filmed in LA] and I don’t want to live in New Orleans. Thank you. Good luck. I wish you well.’
Three weeks later, they had some problems on set; it wasn’t working out [with another actor]. ‘Would you revisit this?’ ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Sure. OK.’ So it worked out as a blessing for both sides. It was a collaboration that made sense, and I was able to get it out of New Orleans [after the pilot was shot, switching to LA]. It was very gracious, and I say that with the utmost respect. So that’s how I got back into it.
Boreanaz has evolved from actor to producer and director, having shot episodes of Angel, Bones and SEAL Team.
[When] I’m on set, I’m learning, I’m growing. I want to meet the grips. I want to talk to them, want to learn their jobs. And that’s all part of it. I really enjoy the producing aspect of it, and I love the budget talks. I love knowing how to shoot in eight days, seven days, 12 days. What can we get here? How do we shoot these locations? How do we get trucks in? I love all that.
Boreanaz hopes his legacy will be to inspire people to continue to “learn and grow.”
I want to just grow. That, to me, is living – being curious, creating stories and developing and watching that fruit blossom. That’s dictated by the universe and by God. That’s not me. [My] story’s already written, so let’s see what it says.
As for what he might be developing next, Boreanaz is giving little away.
I am watching a lot of The Sopranos right now.
tagged in: Bones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CBS, CBS Studios, David Boreanaz, Paramount, Paramount Global Content Distribution, SEAL Team